Noah's Flood Waters

The waters for Noah's Flood came from two sources, besides the water on the surface. First the windows of heaven were opened. Most creationists believe this is the collapse of the water vapor canopy that God created on day two. Second the fountains of the "great deep" were opened on a single day. This vast release of subterranean water will cause the tectonic plates to move and cause the erosion that will make the fossil record. The plate movements caused very deep ocean basins and the water ran into them after the flood was over. If the Earth were perfectly smooth the water on the Earth in the Oceans, lakes, etc. will cover the planet to a depth of over 9,000 feet (slightly less than 2 miles). As a creationist I believe all the mountain ranges of the world are a direct result of major continental movements during the flood, this is more than enough water. After the flood the water ran into the deep ocean basins. The video "The Incredible Discovery of Noah's Ark" has some excellent graphics on this matter.

The amount of water on the Earth in the Oceans, lakes, etc. cover the planet to a depth of over 9,000 feet (slightly less than 2 miles) if the Earth were perfectly smooth. As a creationist I believe all the mountain ranges of the world and the formation of the ocean basins are a direct result of major continental movements during the flood. Here is a short section from "The Answers Book" that may help answer your question. "Could the Water have Covered Mount Everest? We have already suggested that the maximum height of the Floodwaters over a theoretically level earth would have been about three kilometers (two miles). But Mt. Everest, for instance, is more than eight kilometers (five miles) high. How, then, could the Flood have covered all the high hills under the whole heaven? However, we have noted that very high mountains were not necessary for rainfall in the pre-Flood world, and that the mountains today were formed after the Flood by this upthrusting mechanism. In support of this, one can observe that the layers, which form the uppermost parts of Mt. Everest, are themselves composed of fossil-bearing, water-deposited layers.

This process of uplift of the new continental landmasses from underneath the Flood waters would mean that, as the mountains rose and the valleys sank, the waters would rapidly drain off the newly emerging land surfaces. Such rapid movement of large volumes of water would cause erosion, and thus it is not hard to envisage the rapid carving out of many of the landscape features that we see on the earth today, including, for instance, places like the Grand Canyon of the USA, and Ayers Rock in central Australia. (The present shape of this monolith is the result of erosion following tilting and uplift of previously horizontal beds of water-laid sand.)

That is why we also see, in many cases, rivers in valleys today that are far larger than what should have been produced by the river, tiny by comparison, that now exists in them. In other words, the water flow responsible for carving out such large river valleys must have been greater than the volume of water flowing in the rivers today. This is consistent with the concept of voluminous Flood waters draining off the emerging land surfaces at the close of Noah's Flood, and ending up in the rapidly sinking, newly prepared, deep ocean basins.

Rock strata (called sedimentary rock) is formed when moving water deposits silt, mud, ash on top of other material. It can be deposited very quickly. During the eruption of Mt. St. Helens we saw hundreds of feet of finely striated strata put down in hours."

Creationists generally believe that the pre-flood earth had only fresh water and the development of the salty oceans is a result of the flood. The fish and other aquatic creatures adapted to the increasing salt during the flood year. An example of the ability to adapt is the Salmon and its migrating habits.